We all know someone who never seems to stop talking. They’re a yammerer, a babbler, a chatterbox—but they’re also a blatherskite, a clatterfart, and a twattle-basket, as well as a “clucking magpie” and a “seller of gossip.” Here are some other words for gossips you might want to work into your vocabulary.
Babble has been used to mean “to talk excessively” since the mid-13th century at least; the word babliaminy, coined by the English playwright Thomas Middleton, was derived from it in 1608. You can also call an incessant babbler a babelard and a bablatrice.
Babble-merchant is an old English slang word that literally means “someone who sells nonsense noise.”
Blatherskite or bletherskate is a 17th-century word, probably originating in Scotland, that combines the verb blether or blather, meaning “to talk incessant nonsense,” and skite or skate, meaning “a sudden quick movement.” Theodore Roosevelt once used it to refer to Mississippi Congressman John Sharp Williams; TR called him a “true old-style Jeffersonian of the barbaric blatherskite variety.”
Derived from blaterare, a Latin word meaning “to chatter” or “babble,” blatteroon or blateroon first appeared in English in the mid-1600s.
The word bloviate was popularized by President Warren G. Harding, who probably picked it up from local Ohio slang in the late 19th century; back then, it meant “to spend time idly.” Today, it means “to speak verbosely or long-windedly”—and someone who does precisely that is a bloviator.
As a verb, you can use clatter to mean “to disclose secrets,” or “to chatter or gossip,” and clatteran—alongside clattern and the next word on this list—are all derivatives of that.
According to one Tudor Latin-English dictionary from 1552, a clatterfart is someone who “will disclose any light secret.” In other words, a gossip or a blabbermouth.
Clipmalabor is an old Scots word for a gossip or a chatterbox, or according to the Scottish National Dictionary, “a senseless silly talker.” It’s a corruption of the earlier Scots word slip-ma-labor, which referred to a lazy slacker or idler who would literally let their work (i.e. their labor) “slip.” Ultimately, its original meaning was probably something along the lines of “someone who gossips while they should be working.”
Gashle is an old dialect word meaning “to twist something out of shape”; bike or beik is an old Scots derogatory term for a person’s mouth. And if you’re twisting your mouth out of shape by incessantly talking, then you’re a gashelbike.
Long before it came to mean a jingling, clinking noise, the word jangle was used to mean “to talk excessively or noisily,” or “to dispute angrily.” It’s probably derived from an old French word meaning “to jeer” or “grumble,” and so a jangler was probably originally a constant, vocal complainer as much as a chatterer.
Dating back to the 1880s at least, the word jawsmith began life as late 19th-century American slang for a chatterbox, but ultimately it came also to be used to refer to a proficient or professional talker or orator, or a vociferous leader or demagogue.
This word is derived, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, from an old French word, langagier, meaning “to talk abundantly.”
Prate has meant “to chatter” since the 15th century, and probably originally referred to the clucking of hens and poultry. The “pie” of pratepie comes from magpie, a bird that, like many other members of the crow family (including jackdaws, jays, and choughs), has long been seen as a proverbially very vocal, garrulous creature.
The word tongue-pad first appeared in English in the late 1600s, and was defined in A Dictionary of the Canting Crew in 1699 as “a smooth, glib-tongued, insinuating fellow.” That meaning had changed by the time it was added to Webster’s Dictionary in 1913, which defined it as “a great talker.”
What we would now called tittle-tattle was once also known as twittle-twattle in 16th-century English. Twattle-basket is derived from that, and refers to someone full of useless, idle chatter.
A version of this story ran in 2016; it has been updated for 2023.
Paul Anthony Jones
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